Historical Indulgences

ca. 1850, [daguerreotype portrait of a woman with love token and daguerreotype]

via the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Photography Collection

c. 1900, [portrait of a couple in front of a paper moon]

via Harvard University, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Department of Photographs

ca. 1845, [portrait of a gentleman holding his dead wife]

via Exposures: Photography and Death, Audrey Linkman

ca. 1852, “Bank of True Love”, L.N. Rosenthal

via the Library Company of Philadelphia, Comic Valentine Collection

ca. 1840-80, “Caught Him at Last”

Pussy, when the rat she catches, 

Smooths him down with velvet paw,

Then for change his hide she scratches 

With her curved relentless claw. 

So it is in wedlock’s matches, 

Beauty leads us like a straw, 

Till she’s got us “under hatches”

—Then look out for Pussy’s law!

via the Philadelphia Library Company, Comic Valentine Collection

“There are many men who would have done better than I did under the circumstances in which I found myself. If I had never held command; if I had fallen, there were 10,000 behind who would have followed the contest to the end and never surrendered the Union.”

-Ulysses S. Grant in his memoirs

ca. 1860-70, [Portrait of U.S. Grant]

via the Library of Congress, Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints